Luke Owen reviews the third episode of Peep Show series eight…
The last two weeks have been particularly hard to sit through as a Peep Show fan. It’s quite hard to be a massive fan of something only to watch it produce mediocre to poor efforts that make you want to put on a DVD of the first series to remind you why you liked it in the first place – a bit like being that Sega fan waiting for a good Sonic game. But episode 3 did something I’ve wanted since the start of series 8 – some good laughs.
“The Love Bunker” will hardly go down as one of the all time great Peep Show episodes, but it had everything that made Peep Show such an endearing series – Mark being incredibly socially awkward, Jeremy thinking he’s doing something right but really he’s making things worse and the pair of them being thrown into a situation that is completely out of their control. There were some funny jokes, some hilarious lines of dialogue and loads of Super Hans.
Granted, it wasn’t a perfect episode. There was a scene towards the end that started off funny, but didn’t lead to anything in particular. Mark and Super Hans talking about “doing a poo” in their bunker was really funny because the word “poo” is hilarious when said over and over again (if a little childish). But the actual act of Mark doing it lead to nothing but a few Napoleon jokes. You would have thought this would be the episode’s laugh-out-loud moment (like Dobby finding him for example), but instead it just seemed like a cheap joke that was only there to pad out the episode.
I like that the series is finally starting to move along the relationship of Dobby and Mark, even if it has arrived in the most contrived of fashions. Because they don’t act like a couple, you tend to forget that they’re together aside from a few lines from Mark reminding us that she is his girlfriend. But with Jeremy’s new “love” for her, we might be getting a really entertaining series long plot thread. I’ve never really liked Dobby as a character, but I really warmed to her in this episode – despite her being so one dimensional.
For me, the highlight of the episode was ‘band name’ game they play with Simon and his online friends. Between Super Hans and Jeremy burying the music industry with their narcissistic views and Mark pretending he knows more bands than Snow Patrol and The Beatles, this has been the best scene from the series so far. Mark trying to act like he’s normal in social situations is what makes him such a brilliant character.
The last two episodes of Peep Show‘s eighth series have been less than stellar but I’m hoping that “The Love Bunker” is the turning point for the series and we’ll start getting some half decent episodes. However, it could just be the case that my standards for this show are now so low that anything above ‘alright’ is considered a mark in the win column. Time will ultimately tell, but let’s see if this momentum carries over into episode four.
Originally published December 10, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
